


Reversals on Rock

by chewtoy



Category: Original Work
Genre: Absent Parents, Abusive Relationships, Adoption, African indigenous, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Colonialism, Gen, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Magical Realism, Most of these characters are non-white, Non-western, Panic Attacks, Poetry, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slavery, Superpowers kind of?, Telepathy, Trauma, two main characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2020-03-20 03:49:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18984661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewtoy/pseuds/chewtoy
Summary: Zeilla is a hunter's slave who shares her mind with a terrifying wolf spirit and finds herself bought by a strange man.Kazla is a traumatized warrior who's is running from his problems until a woman shows up demanding his attention.Together they have the secret to stopping a looming crisis. Here, the last will be first and the first will be last.I post regularly.





	1. Kazla

“I came here to find you,” a woman said.

Kazla tried to find her over the bar, but his vision was scattered like sand thrown in his face. He rubbed his eyes. He couldn’t remember letting his head drop at all. Judging from the crease in his cheek and the puddle of drool, he’d been sleeping here awhile.

 “Good,” he said. “Then you’ll know who I am and know I’m not in the mood.” Slurred words. Wasn’t even sure she’d understood.

The image of her swam into focus as he raised his head. It had him gripping the bar for support while he breathed through it. Another drink. He wanted another drink to soothe the pain. But he needed to eat. Something, anything, nontoxic. He hadn’t had food in more than twenty-four hours but the drink he’d been consuming was just short of poisonous. The wave passed for a moment and he finally got his bearings.

Wooden booths, familiar style, unfamiliar arrangement: Unknown location.

Bartender, stranger.

Exit behind stranger. Second exit likely behind bar.

So at least he was in the same village he started off in. How late had he gotten here? Had they kept serving him the energetically distilled Enerhugo he’d started the night with, or did they drop him back to human liquor after he’d begun to pass out every half hour, only to jump back up as the frenzy kicked in that was the second part of the drink?

Of course, humans weren’t supposed to consume Enerhugo. It was meant for Creatures and Creature spirits to give them energy and calm their nerves, to act as a counterbalance for those of them that couldn’t handle consistent forms of existence. Albeit not deadly, to humans it wasn’t entirely safe. Binges like his could lead to a sickness that lasted for days. Days, at least, before he felt good enough to do it again.

Last night, what had he done? At some point there was music. Though he couldn’t remember if he’d been singing or if it had just been one song playing on repeat in his mind. He grinned at the thought, perhaps a partially-saved memory, with the half of his facial muscles that were currently working. His head hurt.

Whatever the bartends had done, the chairs were all empty now save for the one he was slumped in. People had set about cleaning the place. The woman who’d spoken walked in front of him, her block shoes quiet. Her head passed in front of the brightest light and stayed there, shading his eyes. Now all he needed was an icepack.

“I am here to help you, not your enemy,” she said.

Tall, vaguely muscular, arm band jewelry, full coverage shoes.

 No visible weapons, no visible scars, relaxed posture.

Not likely a threat for now.

Physically.

Her face softened.

Quietly, she said, “I’m not here to judge you, Kazla.”

His grimace sharpened when he noticed her accent, almost as lilted as his against this area’s flat tones. That, with the shoes. He knew where she was from.

In the same condescending tone he replied, “Why not?”

She held his gaze a second more, and he tried not to look away. He was better at that sort of composure than when he was younger, but still never had near her posture and hold.

“Your mother sent me to find you.” She took a half step back, and he could feel himself relaxing from even that small allowance.

He had an open face, he knew. He tried not to let anything too obvious show.

“She did?”

She nodded, reaching into her bag to pull out a white bleat, one of those newer versions that looked exactly like normal paper. With bleat pairs, the writing on one would instantly appear on the other. It was manufacturing the silvery translucent projection to have the texture and appearance of paper that took more ingenuity. Kazla peered over at it, hoping to catch the glimpse of a message. A message, perhaps, for him. Maybe even written in that distinctive handwriting.

“She has an objective for you.”

A glimpse, he got. It was written out, but not by his mother.

“Ah.”

He closed his eyes again pressed knuckles to temples two or three times. As if he could rub the ache out of anything in this situation.

But there it was. A mission. Not a _hello_ or a _how are you_. Not a request to meet or even an audio of her reprimand that he could listen to over and over again because yes, it was that icy anger and yes, it did terrify him, but at least she cared enough to send him the sound of her voice.

 It wasn’t a matter of laziness or will or rebellion, it was that he couldn’t do it anymore. He’d told her that. He wasn’t capable. Soon it would be a year of no contact from his mother and he’d finally resigned himself to that reality, learning how to force himself to sleep most nights and self-medicate when he couldn’t.

“She’s going to pay you for it,” the woman added. “Enough that you could cease this traveler's life and settle down in one place, if you wanted.” She pushed a puff of hair out of her dark brown eyes and smiled, as if he should be happy about this.

So, this woman was an errander. More than anything, that was what pushed him to anger. The way they came into his life. Judging him with their luxuried adventurer eyes that got to visit place to faraway place but never had to stay anywhere, never understood the desperation of simply being stuck. Interrupting his routine and his structure. Talking of being there on his mother’s behalf. Doing whatever it took to complete their assignments and expecting him to be happy about it. Asking him to do it again. Demanding that he do it again. One more time. Always one more fucking time.

“No,” he managed. He could feel his eyes pressing flat like how his mother’s did when she was furious.

“No?” she asked, blinking, brown against brown. Eyes against face. Light throbbing through his hot head against the cool and soothing dark.

She even seemed confused.

“I’m not going on another mission,” he said. His throat felt like ice, even as his head registered the heat all around him. Maybe he had a fever. Enerhugo sometimes did that to humans if they weren’t careful.

“You don’t even know what it—”

“It doesn’t matter.” He stood, not even realizing he was yelling until a wave of pain hit him. “I fucking told her that was my last—”

He fell back. It seemed he had a better sense of balance on Creature juice than he did sober these days. His head spun as he oriented himself leaning against the bar and sat back up, staring up again into the errander’s umber coloured face.

She looked at him the way people looked at confused animals. Despite the haze of the pain and the artificial bulb above, he held her gaze. He knew it for what it was: a weapon.

“I don’t actually think… that you’re quite ready.”

“See, that. Sure. That works.” He waved his hands, meaning to dismiss her, but blocked out most of the glare with them and kept them right there. “Look, so you can’t accomplish your mission. You’re not, I don’t know, needed here anymore. You nameless erranders—”

“I have a name, Kazla,” she said. Her hair bobbed hypnotically, tied at the base of her neck but pillowing around her shoulders, nonetheless. She looked angry now, like her face would be turning red if she were any lighter. “Come on. Don’t be an asshole.”

He squinted, “What—”

Her eyes seared their way into his brain. The light that cast a halo around her head.

His mind conjured her name.

“Veinneiez.”

“Yes.”

His brain refused to make the connections to who this person was or how he knew her name. He stared, “What.”

She sighed, finally offering him a hand up and helping him right himself onto the chair, eyeing him still as if he could fall again at any moment. “You never did have any moderation.”

His hand stayed grounded to the chair underneath him.

“Can I buy you some water?” she asked.

No amount of water was going to cleanse the rot of his insides after last night anyway, and anyway. It. Was. Too. Bright.

“I’ve gotta go,” he said.

She said nothing. Just looked disappointed in a way that made anger rush the backs of his ears.

“Where are you staying?” she finally asked.

“Why, are you staying too?”

“Not long,” she assured, she rushed, “just for this.”

Kazla sighed, massaging his head through the next wave of nausea. “If you’re here from my mother, you’re delivering my response right away or you’re going to stalk me. I’d rather you not.”

She pinched her lips, her long nose following her similar gaze, and then nodded. “I’ll only be here a few days. I got a room at the stay uphill.”

“Ah.”

“Then come find me when you’re better. So I don’t have to find you.” She turned on her bootheel and walked out.

“Sure,” he said. It was a threat, but when was it not. He picked himself up. He smiled at the bartender as he left. The bartender looked away.


	2. Chapter 2

To say _sit down_ and _go to bed_ in the original language

make contact with the original land. Mimic

a zebra mother’s chitter to son.

Memories of drowning teach

your throat the movements.

Keep a toe in-stream. For you,

language is an unread map.

These red sunsets plant vibrations into your marrow

grow them to be syllables.

Choke on sound

until strangulation comes naturally.

Remind yourself how to pronounce your own name.

Naked fanatics may steal your clothes while you swim,

But passersby see you naked, chasing,

to them you’ve become fanatic as well.

Instead, dance

under sunbeams. Mirror

the movements of zebras

You may meet their spirit.

You may ask where to go.


	3. Zeilla

Under low light, Zeilla’s fingerpads brushed the floor feeling for that telltale groove. When she found it, she took hold firmly and cracked the floorboard away. It had been done many times. It would look the same after.

Here, in a shallow dug hole, the wooden box came delicately as if it were made of the dirt around it, as if it crumbled. Like the cabin, it was nothing to look at, just a rough gesture towards the idea of craftsmanship. Also like the cabin, it was functional, and that was what mattered.

For years now, Silas hadn’t found her statues, carved and squirrelled away in this box as delicately as she could muster. Zeilla leaned against the wall, a wall she’d had a hand in making as well. Most of the time, she and Silas travelled. But on those occasions when they needed to stay in a solid house, his cabin made of wood and patchings up, she’d had time to store new carvings in her box. To keep them safe. When Silas dug his heels in walking the floor, it was usually underneath his very feet. This was pattern of him, not because he was unintelligent, but because he was unobservant. Zeilla let out a small breath. Today was another quick stop, they wouldn’t stay at her master’s cabin for long.

She brushed sandy dirt from the top, covered in cloth. When she’d made it in her younger years, she hadn’t been able to fix a proper lid to it. Zeilla took a moment, to allow the dry unstirred air to fall on her shoulders and tickle past her skin.

Quiet moments like these could be rare. The daylight was leaving more now, and when her master Silas came back, they would leave for town and ride through the night.

But before that, Skersha. Zeilla unwrapped the box and began placing the figurines and whittled sticks all around her, cataloguing them as she did every time it was opened. This was her ritual, and it calmed her. Skersha had been quiet. Days now, longer than Zeilla could easily remember. It would be a nice relief, a nice reprieve from the constant chattering and judgment that almost came from within Zeilla’s own mind, except it wasn’t. Being with Skersha was not enjoyable. But this silence sent sick stomachy shivers down Zeilla’s arms and put her on edge. It felt wrong. It felt like waiting.

She repeated the ritual. Sometimes even thinking about Skersha was enough to draw her attention. And every wait came to an end. Here, pulling her only belongings from their hiding place, was where the she-wolf found her, appearing without a sound.

Zeilla’s eyes darted to the body at her left that had not stood, leaning against the cabin wall, a second before. She looked to the window on Skersha’s right to assure herself that she was still alone, that Silas was not coming back. Her bony fingers clenched and ached, tight around the precious box. Nowhere near as hard as to damage it, only as hard as to keep it safe.

Being with Skersha was often about finding new ways to predict and contain fear. Otherwise, it would overwhelm everything. She refused to allow that. She blew a deep breath through her teeth.

“Are you in the mood for a game?” Skersha asked, leaning on the sill.

Zeilla took another breath. “He’ll be back any time now.”

“Then why did you think my name?”

Zeilla grit her teeth. “Aren’t you busy? I didn’t mean to call you. I just finished the chores. I had a minute.”

Skersha growled from the windowsill. She disappeared and reappeared in a blink, now staring down at Zeilla’s upturned face, close enough to be distinctly unnerving. Skersha used to lament how her human form was simply a twisted replica of Zeilla's own body. Only hers was full grown and maybe properly fed. Instead of Zeilla’s long stringy black hair, Skersha’s had volume and streaks of silver racing through. Instead of human teeth, Skersha’s were sharpened to a pointed. Instead of brown skin, Skersha’s had a tinge of grey, the image of Zeilla’s own rigor mortis. These days Skersha used the body often. Using Zeilla as a template had been easier than making one anew, back when Skersha was new to her powers.

Skersha sighed, easing her body down next to Zeilla’s on the floor. “You know full well these woods bore me. If I weren't in your head, I might wonder about your sanity, living here.”

“You don’t— don’t help.”

The responding laugh: Skersha’s head-thrown-back explosion of sound that had the wooden panels creaking under her feet.

Zeilla looked away. She hated these mind games, barely ever understood their purposes. But she just had to get through them and then she could forget. With a care she reserved only for creations of her own making, she returned to the ritual of placing her figurines in position, touching each of the pieces one by one. The latest was placed among them, at last completing the chess set and adding yet another carving to her growing collection.

“You should smile more,” Skersha said, when she felt the girl ignoring her.

“I am smiling,” Zeilla’s upper lip curled like a wordless snarl, “can't you tell?”

The dark wood ran soft and grainy under her fingers. Zeilla closed her eyes, if not to better feel her creation, then to block out the image of her mental partner.

“It’s boring here,” Skersha intoned. Zeilla’s eyes popped open just in time to see the she-wolf licking her long canines in a way that already sent a spidersilk thread of terror down Zeilla’s spine.

“What do you want?” Zeilla breathed out. “We’re leaving tonight.” She tried to soothe her own tense fingers, tried to stop how her body shook. She counted it a blessing that she didn’t stutter.

“Let’s play.”

Skersha leapt, leaving air, like a pounce. She was gone. The cabin creaked. She was to Zeilla’s right, picking her up and pushing her back. Zeilla could only grip with hands tight until she couldn’t anymore. The girl didn’t feel her back slamming into the wall, not with all her focus on the box, the vibrations left by the way it impacted with the floor.

“Skersha don’t— Stop!”

She reached out for her figurines and a force shoved her back again. Her shirt bunched up in Skersha’s claws as she was pressed harder into, and then up, the wall.

“You’ll see,” the she-wolf said, not a strand of her unnatural grey streaked hair out of place, her physical arms folded across her chest even as her invisible half-human spirit claws dug into Zeilla’s person. “It’ll be fun.”

And when Skersha released her, Zeilla fell, knees to floor.

Boot. Boot. Boot. A turn. A repeat.

Skersha took long, measured paces while she seemed to be thinking up what to do next. In times like these she had taken to conjuring heavy heeled shoes, as if for the sound’s dramatic effect.

It wasn’t anger. Zeilla knew by now how to suppress that when Skersha was in the present with her. It was just…

It was just ridiculous. That Skersha in over a decade and a half of living alongside Zeilla had not yet found a way to get through hard days, boring days, any day really, without forcing the girl to suffer in some way. The two of them did share a mind. And sometimes, they’d talked. They’d sorted out the basic facts over the years. How Skersha remembered nothing before Zeilla, and how Zeilla had been too young to even have memories to mine. For as long as they could remember, they had lived with Silas. And as Zeilla had grown older and learned all her master taught her of his trade: hunting and tanning and weapons maintenance and defending his property, Skersha had taught herself the powers of the mind. She was learning new tricks every day, yet she’d not once come up with a better way to use her time.

“What are you thinking?” Skersha said. Her mouth protruded from her face, but not the way it should for either species. The image constantly shifted as if Skersha yet decide which features would make the sight most horrific. The bones of her wrists snapped off and then slotted together again, wolf paws stabbing out from underneath Skersha’s fingernails and folding in together until each wrist led to two hands, the upper side the fur and claw of a wolf but the underside remaining the smooth idyllic hands of a person who’d never worked a day in her life.

The whole thing was so performative.

Of course Skersha could change from one form to another in less time than it took her to blink. Undoubtedly, this was more effort. She was showing off a new trick.

“Yes, that,” Skersha said, stepping forwards, and Zeilla knew that whatever pride the she-wolf must have felt in her new trick had instantly dissipated. “What were you thinking just now?”

“I wasn’t—”

“Don’t lie to me, child,” Skersha muttered, “you often feel many things but the only time I sense irritation is when I find you’ve been mocking me, or your master. And he is not here.”

Zeilla’s jaw tightened, and now she took a half step back, only to find herself back against the cabin wall, her box right below her feet. It would be sunset soon, and then he would be home and if he found her carvings she had no doubt he would destroy them. When he’d been a child his master hadn’t allowed him any possessions either. He thought it built character.

“Well?” Skersha demanded. And suddenly, she was angry. In her anger, she released her distorted image and flickered back to humanoid. She began pacing like earlier. These thuds somehow louder. Each strike of the heel seemed to echo.

Boot. Boot. Boot. A turn. A repeat. Boot. Boot. Boot. A turn.

With every pace Zeilla could feel Skersha’s fury like a pressure. She really had no idea why Skersha was angry. Sometimes she just was. Anything could set her off. Anger always an extension of the fury at having to exist in this way at all.

Zeilla looked up across the room to see Skersha, standing, pacing, moving. Then transforming into what she considered her ‘most natural’ form. It was one of those wolves with fur the colour of Skersha’s silver-black hair that preyed on the same animals Zeilla’s master trapped and sold for a living.

Skersha had a fascination with animals, so much so that she now insisted she was one of them. A wolf. She’d demanded that Zeilla refer to her as a ‘she-wolf,’ even in her own mind thinking her own private thoughts. On occasions, she checked.

Clic-k. Clac-k. Clic-k. Clac-k. A turn. A repeat.

The sound of Skersha’s claws scraping at the floor had Zeilla tightening her jaw. It wasn’t anger. It couldn’t be. Zeilla knew by now how to suppress that around Skersha, didn’t she?

But again, Skersha was ridiculous. They’d never even seen wolves outside of the projections they’d seen traveling in-city with Silas. Skersha wasn’t some mystery. Skersha knew as much as Zeilla did about their shared past, which was nothing. If the Creature spirit, which was what Skersha really was, had any memory of being a wolf in some past life, Zeilla would have known.

“Tell me what insubordinate thoughts are in your mind before I have to pry them one piece at a time from your pathetic little head!”

And suddenly, Skersha appeared yet again up close and personal, not a step taken. Her words pierced past personal space until they spat on to Zeilla’s cheek. The girl winced her whole body away, twisting, panic involuntarily rising.

Once it got this far, there was no pacifying, only withstanding.

Some moments, Zeilla wished for Silas’s apathy. Always, she hated her master, hated him for how little he seemed to care. Hated him for how incapable he was of summoning any emotion for her Hated him for how he’d caused her, again and again, to run to Skersha and confide in her.

Because no matter how hard he was, Skersha was always worse.

Skersha sent the rancid smell of burning into her nose before lancing her side with the pain of searing flesh, and Zeilla screamed.

For a moment, she held no thoughts in her mind but fear and fury as she was being burned. But a moment was all Skersha needed. Through the opening offered by Zeilla’s panicked pain and disorientation, she sunk her jagged mental teeth in deep. Skersha forced through the expansive holdings of analysis and basic conscious and dug down past all else to her emotional and retentive core.

On the outside, Skersha had disappeared. Her Energy now focused. Zeilla tried not to fight because she knew that was part of the hunt, that the violation was what made it sear through her. If she could relax and let Skersha in it would all be over in a moment. But it was subconscious. No part of her wanted any part of Skersha to infiltrate her thoughts. In the core of Zeilla’s consciousness, Skersha took her time in perusing, while Zeilla tried to fight out a scream.

And in the middle of everything, was Zeilla. So undefended, so fragile, so easily peeled back, the way an explosion peeled back sheets of metal. Skersha knew it. They could both feel it.

It was like a disturbed sleep when she was released, the feeling of finally being allowed to relax, yet something thrumming _wrong_ so deep within her mind. Even the suddenness of Skersha’s vice grip loosening nearly knocked her out.

“So you were mocking me,” Skersha said. But the words came through a sheet of unfiltered water, and she wasn’t sure if in her groggy state she responded with a grunt or not.

The last of Skersha’s energy retracted from the Zeilla’s mind like a pull then a snap. Her body jerked and with a gasp her hands sought out her sides to trace the sweated skin of her ribs, no tender burnt flesh. The pain was gone and only a long faded Energetically healed burn scar, from years ago, remained.

 She was propped up against the cabin wall. Her palms faced up at her sides. Her figurines were strewn to the right of her foot. Her toes wouldn’t move. A long strand of drool connected her shirt and her mouth. Her body trembled again and her eyes wettened without her permit. She pressed the scar again, just to make sure.

The things Zeilla knew to be true never helped her. As of yet, Skersha could only inflict memories upon her, pains for which Zeilla had felt and Skersha had marked to try and replicate later.

“Did you like that?” Skersha asked.

Zeilla looked up, slowly. She waited for Skersha’s speech.

“Did you like that? Because that’s what happens when you mock me. I can tell. I can always tell. You can’t hide anything from me. Silas is your master, but I own you, do you understand?”

Zeilla’s eyes unfocused and she stood up, back to the wall. Nothing more would happen to her now, she supposed. It would take too much of Skersha’s precious energy. Gingerly, she picked up her figurines and set them right within their wooden box. The she-wolf’s face filled with fury so complete that if it went any further it would crumple in on itself, and that’s nearly what it seemed to do as Skersha disappeared into nothing.

“He’ll be home soon,” she said to the open air. To the vibrations in her own jaw. To the alert and watchful presence in her. She felt oddly ready. For anything. What else could Skersha do? But any moment, Skersha would be back. Any moment, Zeilla would regret anticipating it.

Skersha bawled laughter, the sound hitting Zeilla’s eardrums with a ring-ting aching. She winced away from the sudden noise but when she whipped to the right, Skersha was gone again.

“He doesn’t understand you at all.”

Her head went left to follow the sound.

“And you do?” Zeilla said.

Skersha appeared where Zeilla looked, towering above her. She hissed out, “I invaded your mind and I can do it again. This is why your log of a master has yet to break you. He doesn’t understand you like I do. He doesn’t understand what makes you hurt.”

And then Skersha held her box, the carvings Zeilla had made and hidden over years of accumulated effort.

It slid into the fireplace without so much as a thud. And as Skersha watched her with pointed eyes, silently threatening against every urge in Zeilla’s body that twitched towards retrieving it, the box cracked along the long side, and then split down the center.


	4. Kazla

“Tryin to find tarod?” The lady said. “When I was your age if you stared that much, they said you had the energy for hunting. Or maybe you should sit and listen to the wind. Either way, somebody’s trying to tell you something.”

Kazla’s eyes were torn from the bulb beneath his hands to the woman standing by his side. “Just trying to find where it lost the spark, Msr.”

She nodded, “Well good that it’s getting done. Me nor my husband never could learn how all these tarod things work. I’m glad you knocked on by.”

Kazla hummed his agreement.

“At your age we didn’t even have all this, you know. Well we had Creatures of course, always had that, but they stayed as spirits out in the wilderness where they belonged. And all these new things, and magic? It’s just so much.”

“It’s not magic, Msr.,” Kazla said with warmth, “it’s all energy and Conductors. Creatures and humans.”

She chuckled, “Oh, but we have Creature power mucking with everything these days. Not one natural thing left but the mountains and the sky. I know it’s rude to say. It rubs me wrong. It’s not exactly natural if you ask me.”

Was that aggression? No. Unintentional, harmless.

Do the job, get paid.

 

He shrugged, “It came from nature.”

She met his eyes and had the sense to at least look embarrassed. “Of course, right. I’m not saying anything about you, boy.”

“I know.”

“Right, well. Right. Well anyways I’ve gotta head out but. Here. Take this bread it’ll help you work.” She clankered back to her personal pantry and came back with a wrapped-up loaf.

Kazla looked back and made himself smile, “I appreciate, Msr.”

She placed it on the table next to the door where he and the bulbs were. She took her produce bags from hanging by the door. She said, “The kindness of strangers is what keeps our minds right. You remember that, minyr.”

Kazla smiled again. “I will.”

The spark runner popped into place and gave a loud snap before the light re-lit and he placed it back on its hook.

“You’ll be finished before I get back, won’t you? Oh let me get those hetos out for you now. I’ll leave them out on the counter. Get yourself a warm meal tonight. You lock up when you’re done, yes?”

“Will do.”

The next bulb’s spark runner flicked against its port but resisted entry. She brushed by him.

Just passing. One exit. Not a threat.

He hadn’t expected the bread. It was actually much appreciated.

Kazla had found a routine, like people always suggested, so this was how he occupied himself now. In the day, he went around fixing things, whatever he could. In exchange the villagers offered hetos, food, lodging. He’d never been an expert on fixtures; at first, he hadn’t known what he was doing. But the people in these far dry mountain villages tended to look at his eyes and assume he understood the inner workings of anything that ran tarod energy. And eventually, he learned. He worked with his hands and he’d always been good at that. Sometimes, he even felt content. It was good to be in the physical world. It calmed his mind.

Now he could fix most simple energetic machinations, Creatures, and programs. Definitely this light. Actually, he could fix most as long as the spark was still there and the conductors weren’t shot. When the sun was out, he kept his hands occupied. And when it was gone, he did his best to self-manage. Inevitably, when most that was broken had been fixed or when the townspeople had grown sick of him or when he had grown sick of himself and needed to throw himself yet again to the mercy of the wind, he bought up a Creature and rode on. He rode to the next town over or maybe three but always he rode further from the rocks. He was so far now. He’d never felt freer.

Yet Veinneiez was trying to bring him back. He hadn’t seen her since she accosted him two days ago, even though it felt longer. He knew what he’d said, that he’d come find her before she had to find him. But he didn’t have anything in him: to speak or to give her the answers she wanted.

What about her name?

Stop.

Now, she was getting impatient. She’d gone this morning and asked the stay across town from hers if he’d been living there. He knew this because the staykeeps told him, when he came through and hour later to finish helping them with their coyote gate repairs. They invited him to morning chow once the chickens and cavies were secured, and then they told him over chow that Veinneiez had been asking by about him. The warning had shadowed his day.

Regardless, he had to keep up the routine. And so, it was a good thing when he looked up and saw her coming down the sandy road before she saw him. It wasn’t so good when she saw him before he managed to close the woman’s front door. Too late.

 “Veinneiez,” he said in acknowledgement. If he was going to allow himself to be cornered like this, he was at least going to take it like a goddamn adult.

Like an adult who recognized her.

Do not think about it.

“Kazla. You’ve been hiding.”

“I said I’d find you.”

“And I said to make it quick.”

She levelled her eyes at him, and he only didn’t look away because that would mean she’d won.

“Can I come in?” Today she wore gold bands on her wrists, not her arms. They were errander bands, indicating her high rank. It was a softer shinier prettier but cheaper metal than most. It could easily be replaced, and so was representative of exactly the sort of egoist air erranders exuded to him.

“It’s not my house,” he said. Her eyebrows wrinkled, but if she knew anything she’d know he’d been in this town for less than two weeks. “How would I have built a whole house?”

She blinked at him, slowly, as if that question didn’t deserve an answer. Or maybe she didn’t know. Maybe he was projecting. He sighed, maybe he should try to be nicer.

“I’m almost done.”

Kazla sat back down on the top step with the glass and conductor material he’d been working with. He leaned against the mud wall and returned to inspecting the small glass bulbs, examining the spark runners, and using his small metal tools to thread fresh conductor string through the system. After a moment, Veinneiez sat as well.

The dry breezes wafted by them, and even though Kazla had expected a bitter confrontation, he found that he somehow didn’t mind the second pair of eyes watching him work.

“She gave me bread,” he said, if nothing but to fill the frictious silence.

“Who?” Veinneiez asked.

“The house owner. She’s a baker. She gave me a loaf in addition to my pay.”

“That was… nice of her,” she said.

He could also mention the _unnatural_ comment, but that somehow felt too personal.

He didn’t know what Veinneiez’s orders were. The others had delivered their messages and left, had or shouted at him and cajoled him until he threatened them back. But Veinneiez just sat there, her dark face so vaguely familiar, waiting for him to finish. A thread popped from the smallest bulb and poked him in the finger. The smallest drop of blood welled up, not even enough of it to fall to the ground.

“Yeah,” he said.

He wiped the blood off on the hem of his shirt. She held her ankles, the movement twisting at one of her bangles.

“Have you been eating well these days?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, “People here are generous.”

She nodded as well, looking to the other round houses on this side of the hill.

“I can see why you like it out here.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

The last bulb lit up with a blue glow. Kazla could feel the whole system now thrumming under his fingers. Carefully, he stood, he placed the ring of fully replaced lights on a hook on the ceiling just inside the door.

“It’s beautiful,” Veinneiez said, standing now as well.

“Glass is cheaper out here, I think. All the sand. They have Energy in every building in this village now, even these round houses.”

He gathered up his payment, 40 hetos in count, and the loaf wrapped in cloth. He took a steadying breath and met her eyes.

“So you wanted to talk.”

“Let’s walk,” she said.

She took off in the opposite direction from where she came. Uphill, towards the cactuses and the underbrush. He followed, and they walked until there was no more path, and then, when he had stopped next to her at the dead end with a raised eyebrow, she laughed and began to climb the boulder.

The shock he felt at seeing an errander actually climb something was only eclipsed by his realization that amidst the veritable playground of hills, he hadn’t climbed in recent memory, even for his weak attempt at keeping up his training. At the top, she looked down, make a gesture approximate of a woman swooning, and then looked back at him pointedly.

Well.

Kazla tucked his shirt in and stuffed the cloth bundle down it, then he scrambled up the boulder behind her.

“Where are you going?” he asked when he’d jogged up beside her. The brush was sparse up on this part, mostly rock underfoot with little prickly bushes spaced every few steps apart.

“I just wanted to get out of town,” she said. “I know it might seem weird, but I don’t actually like being around people.”

Kazla laughed, mostly out of surprise, “Then why have the job you do?”

“Because I get paid to visit the wilderness like this on occasion.”

“There are so many other ways to do that.” He looked at her incredulously, “Just move out here and for any job you chose, you could be out here.”

Finally, she stopped and really looked at him. “Not all of us get to abandon the life we grew up in.”

“That’s not—”

“It’s okay,” she cut him off. She turned back to walk the path she made for herself. Her face raised to the sky like the sunbeams of midday were warm rain showers. “I just mean, I have a family to think of.”

The breeze ran through his fingers. Kazla reached into his shirt and took out the bread as he trailed alongside her. He pulled off a piece for her and she took it.

“We were raised by the same firepit, that much I remember,” he admitted, the blur of memory coming into focus the more he meditated on her image.

Don’t.

Veinneiez ate the piece, humming her agreement. “My mother sewed the Emphit’s clothes. Her personal tailor. Her hands barely work these days.”

“Ah.”

“If I were to run off like you,” she said, “she’d starve before her next session of pain management.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

He pulled off another piece of bread, which she took as well. They reached a gorge. She looked at it, seemed to consider working her way down through the brush and climbing up the other side. Instead, she sat at the edge. Feet laid out on red descendant rock. He eased down next to her and sat the bread on the cloth between them. The sun beat against them both, her kinked hair and the cloth on his back.

“Why did you leave?” Veinneiez asked.

Kazla worked his mouth open. Even his throat was tight against the words. Yet for some reason, he felt compelled to explain himself.

“I— I couldn’t do it anymore. Missions. Couldn’t be at my mother’s beck and call. Couldn’t… be there. Anymore.”

“So what, is it any better here?”

His eyes whipped to fix on her. Her tone was too accusing, too similar.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

Her dark eyes gave nothing when she returned his gaze.

“We need you.”

“We. Who’s we? The Emphit?”

“Everyone, even these villagers. The Emphit needs you for this.”

“Why can’t she send someone else?”

“You know why.”

Veinneiez stood. She took a last look towards the gorge, as if she wished she could spend the rest of the day taking her time amidst the thorns and the weeds. She picked up his clothed snack and handed it to him as he got back on his feet.

“Kazla, I know you don’t want to hear this, but you need help.”

He snatched it from her hands, “You’re right. You should go.”

Her eyes pierced deep into him. “You took an oath to serve.”

Mouth dropped opened, then clamped shut. Those words the same as the Emphit’s. Now Veinneiez stood one way with the gorge on the other.

“I’m done,” he said, “Bye.” He took to step around her and she moved into his way.

“Kazla, stop, please. We have people who can help you, you don’t have to deal with this all on you own.”

“Get the fuck out of my way.”

“Stop—”

He tried to shove past her, but she knocked him off balance and slammed him to the ground. He hit the dirt and sand just before the edge of the gorge, and the empty space behind him sent his heart pounding in his throat. Either he’d underestimated the strength on her frame, or he’d gotten weak. He was at the edge. He was weak. His eyes flicked to her.

She’ll throw you over without a second thought.

Possible weapons: stuff rocks in bag

One strike to the temple, control the wrist, strike to kidney, run away.

No.

“Sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean—”

“I don’t need your help,” he growled and stood. Bluster to hide the shaking. Posture. Yell. Her hand might’ve well imprinted a bruise into his chest. He felt the sun like claws under the thin protection of his clothes. He felt weak. He stepped by her; her eyes narrowed; this time she didn’t try to stop him.

“You can’t keep hiding from these problems.”

He shook with the itch to run, walking as quickly as he would allow himself to be.

“I’m not. I’m busy.”

She followed him. Why couldn’t she stop following him?

“Yeah?” she didn’t believe him.

He stopped, turned, breathed hard. “Yes.”

“What are you busy with?”

“I’ve been working. On myself.”

And it was working. He’d restrained himself. He had to keep it under control.

“Have you now?” Her face was just a face but her whole aura began to spiral. The accusations. The attacks. With every breath he breathed into his chest, jagged forms and dark colours shot out from her.

“Yes, I fucking have.”

She crossed her arms. “You don’t seem to be improving.”

“Fuck off, how would you know? You’ve been here two days.”

Her lips: pinched. His breath: ragged and uncontrolled. Sweat dripped on his wrists.

“Are you?” Her arms uncrossed, folded right back. “Are you improving?”

It was so hard to see. She stood there accusing him and all Kazla could picture was his mother. Her orders. The hazy image of drops pooling on chin, red saliva yearning for ground. The memories came too fast for his mind to slam them shut and his body paused, mid-inhale, amid that familiar panic. The gaping cavity between his ribs point-blank refusing to accept air. He barely recognized his feet on the ground, or the way the sweat peeled from his skin.

His ashy hands scrabbled at his chest. He exhaled. He took measured breaths. He tried to remember who he was and how to regulate airflow. And how to keep focus on the moment, the fight, the enemy before him.

“Kazla, what the hell?”

It felt so intensely that she wanted to cause him harm. Someone he knew. His body preened for a fight. His thoughts had narrowed into too much of a point to be able to comprehend her complexities. She wanted to help, she said. She was the enemy. She was so distant.

He must be shaking. He must be gasping.

He hit his chest three solid times and then wrapped his arms around himself.

“Go away,” he begged.

But as he said it, he knew there was nothing he could do. She wasn’t going to fight. She wasn’t going to leave. As he realized it he could feel himself leaving the situation instead. Instead of hyperventilating, he could feel a fog blowing through the runners of his own brain. The fog, a blanket. From where he found himself sand biting into his knees, arms wrapped like a blanket on his shaking body, he opened his eyes and saw the plain laid out before him. Yet he observed nothing.

Next to him, a body in movement.

“Kazla, what’s happening?”

The words meant nothing to him. He couldn’t think. He didn’t want to disturb the fog off in the way answering would. With it came a calm: not false but fleeting.

He breathed. He had to remind himself to breathe, but it felt like a pattern he recognized. Eyes unfocused stared out at the pain.

“Does this happen to you a lot?”

He looked down at a hand on his legs. It didn’t feel real, but he remembered that it was. He nodded.

“Do you want me to take you back?”

With each breath inhaled the air rumbled past the knot in his throat and echoed in the cavern of his lungs.

“I’m going to touch you, okay? I’m going to help you up.”

He nodded now, was tense but calm now. The body jostled against his, but he didn’t want to think about it. He was walking, no longer wrapped. She was walking too. He remembered he’d had a cloth, but it hardly mattered.

“I’ve got your things,” she said.

He nodded.

They walked until his hands felt like his hands again. They walked until he felt numb in the kind of way they didn’t require emptiness, but still allowed for it. The sandaled feet that landed on sand and dirt were his until they needed to climb down the rocks and then they were careful but still his. Once, he looked at her, but the wordless thoughts were all too blurred to include gratitude. He’d save the guilt for later.

“Come on,” she said on occasion. “I’m sorry. It’s okay. I’m sorry. I’ve got you.”


	5. Zeilla

Skersha was silent the rest of the night, though if she hadn’t been, Zeilla’s thoughts may have turned more murderous than was good for her own health. Instead, Zeilla moved. She did not think of the years she had put into the act of creating, or how furious with herself she was for having kept valuables in the first place. She’d known it was dangerous, she’d known there was no reason to. She had brought this upon herself the moment she tricked herself into believing that anything of hers could be safe and she hated herself more for it than she hated Skersha or Silas or whoever was out there who had decided to make her like this. Defective like this.

Her eyes turned her to the heater and the red boiling soup contained within. She would be damned if she those eyes go puffy. She felt at her ribs, just as she had minutes before, and minutes before that, for the faded tender ache. It wasn’t real pain, per se. It was like prodding at a three-day old bruise. It was pain that had faded from purple back to brown and could no longer be distinguished from her skin. But the dark hurt was still there, under her skin, at a slight tint if you looked the right way.

The cabin walls ached into place as if settling down on a sleepless night. Silas, having done his rounds, had returned at the fading of dusk light. He expected to be fed before they set off and had brought the ingredients for Zeilla to start a stew right away. She turned the heater down and set out two bowls.

On the other side of the cabin, next to the fireplace, Silas sat in his armchair whittling away. It was either his fishing spear or a bow, but she couldn’t tell without peering around, and he hated when she stared. He’d tried to teach her archery once, said she was a natural. But the lessons were far and few after that. It was too tiring for his self-seeking mind. Zeilla padded over to him and handed him his bowl. Next to his armchair, she sat herself on the floor and stared into the fireplace. Where her box had cracked less than an hour before. It may have been odd, having both a fireplace and a heater. But the heater was Energetically powered and would last for years, so they took it everywhere they went. The fireplace was a luxury Silas afforded himself, a reminder of his children's home upbringing.

Another remnant, at least Zeilla suspected, of that upbringing was his preference for silence. Silas rarely spoke. He did when he had to, for business deals and such, but on a regular day he was almost essentially mute. If not for Skersha, perhaps Zeilla’s words would have left her as well. But there were good things of it. In the silence at least, there was an empty space that she could interpret comfort into if she so pleased.

'Come here, girl,' she could imagine him saying. 'Let me teach you.'

And then he would tell her stories of far away. Of all his travels. Of his love. He would say 'Before Emmry died, you remember her? I know you were young, but so kind to you, you must? She wanted you to be more than a market child, raise you as ours. Do you remember? It’s not your fault. It’s wasn’t your fault.'

And Zeilla would say, 'I know, yeah, I know,' because he would’ve said it so many times before that she would’ve believed it, all of it. He would draw her to sit in a chair next to him instead of on the floor, back to his armchair. She would never have seen the desperate plea in his eyes that broke him, transforming into anger when there was nothing more to be desperate about. And in this perfect world, on days where she was so numb from Skersha’s invasions that she couldn’t get up to move, he wouldn’t yell at her, wouldn't hurt her more. He would kneel next to her and he would put a tender hand to her shoulder and he would tell her to take the rest of the day off.

Zeilla downed the last bits of her stew and prodded again at the ghosting pain in her side, only being interrupted as Silas stood, and she scrambled up to collect his bowl. If she’d been paying more attention, she should’ve noticed he was almost done. She would have anticipated him so there was no space in the room for his anger to flourish. She would've finished eating faster. Outside of her imagination, his hands were large and his nails untrimmed. His shoulders were broad and his stomach equally so. He’d never been able to grow in a full beard, but his skin was white like the flesh of a freshly cut tree, and that skin was rough and calloused. Outside her dreamings, the reality of him menaced her waking hours. He’d gotten better in recent years. But there was a reason she had a burn scar, old and healed but very very real, for Skersha to draw upon. It began on the left side of her chest and enveloped her downwards before ending jaggedly with her lowest rib.

Zeilla stacked the bowls together in the heater. She would have to clean them but that could wait until they reached the stream. For now, she packed it all into Silas’s sack.

“Bag?” Silas asked.

She picked up her own sack and held it out to him. Something about it must have looked wrong to the man, because instead of simply patting it down, he emptied all its contents to the floor. After a moment of staring at her clothing, soap, tools, and pots he nodded and walked brisquely to the cabin door. Zeilla made sure to throw the sand bucket into the fireplace before quickly gathering her things up and heading out the door. The lock Silas affixed to the front was Energetically powered. But Zeilla wasn't quite sure what made it special.

The bags were slung. Some upon Silas's travel beasts, more on Zeilla's. Water bag on water bag. She was lighter. The contract was set, her beast to follow his. The payment due was unrolled, ejected bloodlessly from inbetwen Silas's beast's bones. His signature was imputed. With it the bleat payment was verified. Creature fur peeled back from creature back and the translucent sheet was enveloped again into the flesh of the travel beast. Their eyes were opened, alert from having powered off. The creatures were ready to ride again. They would go nowhere he didn't direct them. They were mounted. Silas called for them to go.

And off they were. Through to the sandy barren wastes at the light of setting sun so it would be night before they got there, and Silas's pallid skin would not peel. Zeilla had no idea where they were going, but in all honesty she usually didn't. He dragged her city to city like this with seemingly the whims of the four winds guiding him, and she could only ever guess from the weaponry he brought and the clothes he wore whether he planned to hunt, what exactly he was hunting, where they would trade. She never knew how long they'd be staying, or any other number of details. And with Silas knowledge was vital. Though he barely talked, he expected his every whim to be met. And in recent years, she'd gotten good at it. It was something of a personal pride that she could provide him what he needed, even before he realized he needed it. When she did good, he was known to allow her to nap when all work was done.

When she did really good, he would get a thoughtful look in his eyes and study her. She liked to imagine he recognized something of himself in her from the childhood he rarely spoke of but spent so much time dwelling on. Sometimes when he was drunk enough and angry enough, he would open his dulled tongue and spew out memories until there was nothing left but anger and foam both frothing from his mouth.

He grew up alone, he'd say, not even someone to watch after her like she had from him. There had been a children's home, or several, full of children's home monsters with no mothers or fathers of their own, and he'd been sold to a tanner just as he'd hit the growth spurt that made him beastly. The tanner had trained him and when he grew up, he went out to hunt the animals to win the hides that his own master tanned. The animals that were killed with respect like his master had taught him. Nothing like these half dead Energetic spirit monstrosities they rode on to and from. When he was drunk, he told her so many stories and underpinned them all with the respect for the world that she should have, that she would probably never have because of that spirit in her mind telling her otherwise, poisoning her against him.

Zeilla had to refocus.

It could be hard to grip to reality on long trips like these when she had nothing with which to occupy her hands and nothing to analyze but the constant sounds. The wind whistling and the creatures snorting and the way they landed every step like the point of walking was to make an impact and the silence between her master and her that took up so much space that sometimes she wished for him to stop and yell again. Zeilla didn't like focusing on reality and the second she pulled herself to it, she realized she hadn't dressed warmly enough. The air was still warm to her hands, but the heat was fading almost as quickly as the light of the sun and soon the warmth would begin to seep out of her body, expelled from her ears to the tips of her fingertips. But she couldn't start their trip by disturbing Silas's peace. It wasn't just dreams she slipped into, it was the memories and the stories her master had told her. The numbness that existed within her mind. The parts of it that were hers. Skersha was away but who knew how long that would last. It was better to just be numb.

Zeilla sat back on her creature with a heavy sigh. The sound was caught by the thick air and thrown behind them. These creatures were now Silas's favourite, with extra water in their stomachs and the ability to walk for long distances carrying heavy weights. Even though this was a creature made to be owned, she was acutely aware that it did not belong to her as it lifted its toes, jostling her short frame along as it lumbered far more quickly than she could have run. And something about that line of thought. In her chest a tightness formed, taking shape in her lower belly and gripping upwards towards her chest. She tried to think, like before, of anything else. This breed seemed modeled off a combination of a camel and an elk, their feet soft as a camel and only doing well on this forest floor because of Silas's controlled burns, yet with a shorter neck and the rack of one of those cold place beasts.

Within only hours they were out of the trees and sandy dirt began to transition to simply sand. To the left and right all one could see were the increasingly barren brush that lay short to the ground. And the beginnings of the climb to the dunes mounted as a challenge not to be taken up, but for the creatures to bear as Zeilla her master were only made to deal with the sliding cold of night. Her lungs felt tight. It wasn't hard to breathe per se, but it felt as if it should have been. Zeilla hated the cold. Her chest tensed.

_I wish you and I could hunt,_  Skersha said.

Zeilla was nearly surprised out of her brooding. _Here? What would we hunt out here?_

_You never pay attention,_  Skersha stated, and Zeilla could feel the she-wolf's irritation rising, but felt it tamped down just as quickly. _The animals here flick in and out of the brush. They come from underground. They're even more active at night. Do you see the little black flecks of movement? Look._

Skersha left her then. But Zeilla's dull human eyes could see nothing by the dimming light. It was likely whatever Skersha expected her to see wasn't even something Skersha had seen, but felt, in the way she described feeling the world moving around her through the vibrations in the air and the heat life gave off and the energy of spirit. Zeilla scoured the sand and brush underfoot, eyebrows furrowed and body leaning forward. Nothing nothing. The sun disappeared as the girl searched for what she was sure was not there. Yet after a long while of silence, Zeilla did see something flick from underbrush. And as she focused on what was usual and what was unusual, the movement of shadows, she began to see what Skersha was talking about.

_Don't wolves hunt larger animals?_  Zeilla asked.

But then, Skersha didn't want to respond. _You know nothing,_  she finally said. _We move in families. You wouldn't understand._

That hurt. Zeilla said nothing else and Skersha put her focus elsewhere. Zeilla never knew what Skersha thought about or did when they weren't talking, but usually she didn't wish to. Now that Skersha had brought it to her mind, Zeilla looked out not to tarod but to the animals moving around in the night. Rodents and insects and else. The act of observation focused her, as Skersha had likely known it would. She'd probably felt that tense reasonless fear bubbling up in the girl's chest as it on occasion did and had predicted this would distract from it. It was hard to know ever if Skersha would have a good or bad impact on Zeilla's life but at least she seemed to take breaks between the days of torment. On days when she wasn't crow-barring herself into Zeilla's mind, she could be good company.

It was hours before they reached Silas's destination, and they set to work right away.

Hours later they would arrive at the first oasis town just as the sun began to rise. They would set up to sell. The animal products Silas had stored within his travel beasts had been kept frozen cold to the touch. They would take shade under a tent opening and Zeilla would begin to yell at passersby to take a look at her master’s wares. When they had sold in that town, they would move to the next, and when the animal products were halved, the travel beasts would merge into one, creating a double-boned beast where she rode behind her master.


	6. Kazla

In Kazla’s dreams, mist flits at the corners of his vision. It’s purple, it’s hazy. He asks around but no one knows where he is. On one is a mountain and on the other, a dark wet red. It’s like thick clay, like the afterimage of staring at the sun. He knows this on instinct, because he cannot see it. When he tries to move his head, turn his eyes and look at the dark mass, a terror grips him. The writhing red mud is alive, and somehow, he knows that to look at it would be to invite it in. Again, in the periphery he sees the purple mists. He goes in search of them. They draw him in.

In his dreams, the mud is now pouring after him, leaking into his other dreams. He runs, but it’s cheerily lapping at his feet. The mist is gone. Or, it was never there.

“Help me,” he begs Veinneiez, who is at the edge of the redness. She is protected by the mists, or maybe the redness doesn’t want her to begin with.

“I can’t,” she says. “You’re already in it.”

In his dreams, Kazla sees purple at the corners of his eyes. It’s a butterfly, he grasps at thin air. He sees dark red and scrambles away. He trips, on the mist, the fluttering paper wings.

In his dreams, he’s in a cabin telling his sister: “Never forget. I won’t let it happen to you. You don’t have to trust me, but you do have to remember.”

She’s asking him: “How will I remember?”

He’s wiping red mud off her cheeks and out of her stringy hair.

He’s saying: “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Purple in the corner of his vision but it’s not there when he looks. When he turns back, the mist surrounds her like a friend. She plucks it from the air.

“Look, it’s a butterfly,” she says, and it is. She tears its violet wings off and puts them on her eyes. She stuffs its body in her mouth. The clay on her cheeks begins to harden and crack. “Look, I’m a butterfly.”

In his dreams, he’s breaking a rabbit’s neck and he’s sobbing. The rabbit is a human boy. Or maybe a girl, it’s not quite clear.

In his dreams, Kazla sees purple at the corners of his eyes. It’s a flower, he grasps at thin air. Red reaches for him and he lurches away. When he trips, on the mist, the fluttering paper wings, he falls to his knees and looks down. What he really tripped on was long black hair. He sits back on his heels. His hands are shaking. He reaches out and it’s sopping, soaked. Brown but too bright to be mud or clay. He’s sobbing now. He tries to wipe the blood off, but it becomes more of the mud. The smell of rust is everywhere. He’s forgotten his name. He tries to wake himself, but he finds himself unable to do so. Unable to stop crying. When he opens his eyes, asleep as ever, the redness is up to his ankles and knees.

When he looks up, Vei is standing there. He lets out a soft groan.

“I can help you,” she promises, as if she knows what that means.

“No one can help me but me,” he says.

“Then wake up.”

He can’t. She must know he can’t, because she walks away.

“Come on, then,” she says.

He stands and follows her.

The gasp seemed to jerk his body awake before even his eyes snapped themselves open. He was shaking, shaken.

Now, he found his bearings looking around the room in Veinneiez’s stay. The woman herself was nowhere. The walls were dark blue. The room was near unlived in even though she’d been here for days. In one corner was a bag and next to where his head laid moments before was his. He was on the ground, a woven mat between him and the cob floor. His back felt good even as his neck and shoulders still tensed from the dreams.

It took a while, but he began to calm himself.

Kazla only vaguely remembered being brought here. That struck him suddenly, and shame pushed heat to his face, worsened by the knowledge that Veinneiez, distantly familiar though she may have been once, would report all this back to the Emphitet. She’d been right. He was an ass and she was just doing her job. Not everyone had the luxury of leaving. But that didn’t make it better.

One thing he knew for certain: he’d embarrassed himself in front of Veinneiez already by losing his mind and letting her bring him to her stay. Might as well leave, before she came back. Before he did more damage.

He grabbed his bag and had his hand on the door, ready to slide the thick fabric aside, when he looked to his left and saw her. From the bed corner he’d thought the room was a square, but he hadn’t seen this arch here next to the entrance. It led to a second room where she was sitting there. Eating. They met eyes.

Two exits, not one.

“Oh. Hello.” He didn’t say: I didn’t realize you were here. He didn’t ask if he’d made any sounds in his sleep.

She hummed. “Morning chow. Want something?”

He wanted to leave. But he wasn’t a coward.

 “Okay.” He dropped his bag back to the floor.

She got out a second bowl and poured him out some. It wasn’t quite clear what exactly she’d been eating, but it was a white grainy dish. The first taste was of root vegetable, the aftertaste almost tart.

“You never told me what happened,” Veinneiez said, and fuck she wanted to talk.

“Yeah,” Kazla agreed.

“I’m sorry that happened.”

“Which part?” he asked.

“I’m not sure exactly. Whichever part you were reacting to.”

He glanced at her, then back down to his bowl.

“Does that¾”

“I don’t need an interrogation from you,” he said.

“Fine, okay,” she put her hands in the air. “I just wanted, you know, to make sure it didn’t happen again.”

“It will.”

“Okay.”

“You can report that back to the Emphitet, if you want.”

“Alright,” she sighed.

He looked up at her again, this time she didn’t meet his eye. Her shoulders were lower, looked less bold and defiant. The curve of her lips sucked itself into a pursed pinch.

“Are… you okay?” he asked, not quite sure where the boundaries were, or how far he could push them. Was he overstepping? Would he know if he were? How soon could he leave?

“Yeah, no, I’m sorry,” she said.

“For?”

“Just, everything, I don’t know.”

He opened his mouth, but she looked up.

“Can I be honest with you?”

Her dark eyes bored into him, but he nodded, “Yeah.”

“I’m not here on a mission, in the normal kind of way.”

He took another mouthful. “What kind of way then?”

Her brow furrowed and she stared intently at a spot on the table for a moment. “It’s… a little complicated. I’m not actually sure exactly what my mission is.”

“You get a bleat with instructions. What’s complicated about that?”

“It’s not the instructions, Kazla. Look. I don’t have it with me right now, but I’m not just supposed to deliver a message or hang around. I know what I’m supposed to do. It just didn’t say exactly how. I thought it would be obvious, but maybe not.”

“Huh,” Kazla said. That was… confusing. And maybe good? She seemed like a nice enough person, at least in his early childhood memories of her he remembered her being a good person. He hoped she’d take any vaguery to his benefit.

Had they been friends? Had they ever even talked? It was the dream and she was there. Behind all that mist. A cloud so thick it felt reinforced.

But he didn’t really have time for this. His entire morning rituals had been interrupted, and if he didn’t go soon, the rest of his day would be just as chaotic as the one before. The routine helped him.

“I am supposed to follow you around, I think,” she went on. “The bleat seemed to indicate that I’ll be with you for quite some while.”

Kazla laughed and the sound turned hard in his throat without him even meaning it to.

“That’s cute,” he said, not meaning to be patronizing but on the defensive regardless. He finished with the bowl. “If I need a stalker, I’ll let you know.”

He stood and grabbed his bag.

“Wait,” she stood too. “At least tell me where you’re staying.”

He considered it, but only for a second. For all he knew she could be lying about the confusion. He hadn’t seen a bleat with a seal, couldn’t know for sure why she was here.

“You found me yesterday. If you’re really just here to hang around, why don’t you find me again? It’ll give you something to do.”

“Kazla,” she said, like an admonishment. Like he needed admonishing.

“Bye,” he said, and swept her cloth door aside.

He needed to get back on track.

The first thing he did ¾when he was far enough from her stay to be sure she hadn’t followed him¾ was to check his bag and see what made it through the night. He didn’t trust that she wouldn’t search his things. Or that she wouldn’t steal them, sometimes the Emphitet sent erranders to do that too. But it was all there. Maybe he was being petty. All his shit was replaceable anyway, what did it matter if she took his things as some kind of bizarre physical proof? When he’d left the rocks, he hadn’t taken much of value. If the Emphitet wanted updates on his condition, she’d had plenty of time to ask.

The residue of the night’s dreams was still on him, and he needed it off. The mist. The red. Trying not to think about it. He needed to bathe. Purge the stench of panic from his salted skin. Normally he’d be finishing up his bath by now, to start out earning morning chow, but Veinneiez had given him a free meal and free time with it.

He tried to remind himself it wasn’t her fault for reminding him of the Emphitet. His mind found the rocks anyway no matter who was in front of him, trailing him with it to the missions and objectives and careless way he used to throw his body at danger. Now, he was running. Now, the sun was orange as it rose. Now he was by the edge of town, by the river. He wouldn’t be reminded.

By the time he was in the river he didn’t remember having stripped. But the water was warm like the air and he sank until it covered his chest, doing all he could not to think of the muddy clay between his toes. No, he’d grabbed his pumice stone and now he bathed. Washed himself clean and then kept scrubbing until the skin screamed. He was his skin: raw.

Distant on the other bank there were families from the other village. Downstream, he thought he spotted a herd of zebras. But no one bathed in this spot with him. He looked back at the brush behind and around him and the tree where his clothes and bag lay thrown to the dirt. He scrubbed his chest again.

Veinneiez was like an allergy. Ever since she came, as much as he’d tried to suppress it, he’d though of no one and nothing else. He hadn’t been training. He hadn’t been drinking Enerhugo or Kot leaves or even human-intended wines. Just her presence had been enough to distracted him from distracting himself and now he could feel the roar building up so strong within him that now all he felt was an aggression that he knew could turn into undirected rage if left unchecked. She’d unbalanced him, picked him up and set him wrong side down.

And he couldn’t even fault her. Her presence: not her fault. Her mission: not her fault. Their childhood: neither of their faults. There was such a weight of fault, within him. The stone of guilt threatened to bind his hands and feet and throw him to the mercy of the river, to sink where it dragged him. But Veinneiez wasn’t pulled down, she wasn’t the flightless one.

Now that he admitted it to himself, he did know her.

He laughed, as in desperation. He forced his own head under the water and screamed into river bank.

There, his mind on the inside was the same as the water on the outside. He washed away all the fog between him and his memories of Veinneiez. It was like hearing a story told in his own voice.

* * *

Two kids were raised in the same capitol of the same Emphit. Two kids, and many more, because all the women who worked brought their young children to play together there. Parents who didn’t farm, didn’t herd came to where the younger kids played. Storytellers, administrators, tailors, witchdoctors, musicians. Having finished with their work, the parents nursed the children, cared for them. Watched over them all and told stories and laughed around the firepit.

Two dozen kids or so. They played on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. These two met in the spot where the man had once fallen from the cliff and barely landed, breaking his legs for life. When the boy asked the girl why her afro was bigger than her head, the girl told the boy his eyes looked stupid.

“They’re violet,” the boy said because he thought that was a smart word.

“Well actually they’re weird so you’re a freak. Just so you know,” the girl said.

He said, “I’m not a freak, you have to not say that.”

“Yeah, you are,” she said. She shrugged her shoulders to the tips of her ears. “But I don’t mind.”

They became friends not because of this, but because of every day after it. Where they scratched symbols onto boulders and watched lizards and ran a hoop around with a stick. He called her Vei because her name was hard to pronounce, and she called him Kaz to make it fair. They played with other children, but when Emphitet Elontrei came and hoisted him onto her hip, told him it was time for training, Vei was the one he wished he could go home with instead.

* * *

Kazla crawled the riverbank and fell to it dripping. Under the sky, naked to the sun. He didn’t want to move to get his clothes, but he shielded his eyes from the light. Yeah, Vei was not the flightless one here. The guilt was all his.

In all honesty, Kazla forgot things all the time. Nights where he went drinking. Places he’d left things. Spurts of temporary memory loss was the primary use of Kot leaves. And he liked it that way. These days every time he remembered something it was worse than the last. But it was so hard to believe he’d forgotten a whole person. A whole person. At the same time, it made sense. Why Veinneiez, he didn’t know, but he knew intrinsically it was true. As true as the sun on his bare body.

No, that was enough. He sat up. The wallowing needed to stop.

He got dressed.

He had questions.


	7. Zeilla

Zeilla was feeling the day push her down, was feeling the infinitesimal space between ground and the soles of her shoes flatten into nothing. Her shoes were a part of the dust and her feet were ground upon it and still, the sun, pushing down against her shoulders until her body was coal underneath the rock and her personal energy had all fled to tarod.

“Msr,” she stopped in front of a large woman walking, “we have meats stored—” the lady pushed her back and continued down the market.

Zeilla hated being forced to speak, but the rawness in her throat was perfect for shouting. She could make herself distinct in sweaty crowds of many hundreds.

“Cold meats!” she yelled, “Animal product!”

It wasn’t safe for Silas to be in this bright a light for long, she knew. Sun like this could scar his skin red and he would be in pain for days. So now he was covered from the light with scarves, whatever he could find to shield himself.

“We store cold!”

This time a short man with little hair approached her. She thought she recognized him, but she hadn’t been here for so long it was easy to forget.

“You have tanned leathers?” he asked.

“Yes, yes.”

“For book binding, old fashioned hand-made kind of books. I bought from your master’s stock last year. I’ve anticipated your return.”

She looked back to Silas who had his arms crossed and body leaned entirely in the shade. He nodded. She turned back.

 “Yes, of course! Let us show you.” She paused, turned, shouted at more passersby, “Meats here! Animal product!” Then she turned back to the balding man and rolled out the wares.

Once she rolled out the wares on their table in the shade, she began her pitch. Silas knew what they were selling of course. He had hunted the animals. The process was all his. She’d helped him with preparing both meats and leathers, sanding and shaping and hanging out to form for the latter, but he had taught her everything she knew. And when she went to get them food out in markets, he bought all his materials, judging them by metrics he’d never quite let Zeilla in on. He, more than her, knew what it all was worth and how to use it.

These days, he had been trying to train Zeilla. At first all she knew was to shout at the strangers who walked by until their only option was to pay attention, to see her. She did it sometimes bitterly, often eagerly. But she was learning to sell now too. And today in town Silas had revealed himself to be in a terrible mood. He’d been barking commands like a dog and treating his slave like one too. Zeilla was taking this under notice and was working extra hard to appease him.

“Here we have a wide variety. We have elk, deer, wallern. If you want softer, we do calf and kidskin. For books you’ll need…” she looked back to Silas.

“You want sturdy or imprinting leather?” Silas said. His arms were still folded. His shoulders still pulled back.

“Sturdy. These are to last.”

Silas waved to her, “Show him seven ounce.”

Zeilla moved to do so and with few more words a sale was made. He’d bought a lot.

“Msr, do you want to order for our next arrival?” Zeilla asked.

His face lit up, “Why, yes, little girl. I will.”

This, too, was done quickly and easily. Behind it all, Zeilla could tell that Silas approved.

The thing about Silas was that, as a child, he had been an orphan too. Now and then, between days of silence and wordless fury, he said how he was sold from an orphanage to a tanner. Zeilla knew not even the tanner’s name but she knew that he’d taught Silas much, and that when the tanner had died, Silas had taken over the work. As Silas had begun to train her, Zeilla had begun to wonder if perhaps she would do the same.

 _Silas probably murdered his owner and you should too,_  Skersha laughed.

_Master, not owner, Skersha. I’m not an animal like you._

_Kill him._

_I can’t just_ —

_Bullshit. I’ll help you._

_And what would I do then, since you’re so smart? Why would I do that?_

_He hurts you. You want to, I’ve felt it._

_I’m not going to try to_ —

 _Because you’re weak. Coward. Pathetic. Just_ —

“Meats kept cold!” Zeilla screamed into the marketplace. “Sold here!”

Drowning out Skersha’s noise didn’t always work, but this time she went away.

“Zeilla,” grunted Silas. His approval rarely lasted seconds very long. “Louder. And the furs.”

“Yes, master,” she ducked her head and turned back into the pounding sun. This time when she yelled, it was at the top of her lungs. “Tanned leathers and furs! Get it all here! Best tanner in the emphit! Best hunter in the emphit! Everything animal, get it here!”

As Zeilla went on to harass another stranger who wanted nothing but to pass, a man began to cross the road. The sun roared its flames to touch his skin, as he was lighter, not like Silas whose skin looked like a chalk and who stuck out like a beacon in a crowd, but lighter than Zeilla, enough to where his skin might burn too if he weren’t careful on a day like this, where eggs would easily cook on metal in the sun and one had to drink much water for fear of falling to heat sickness. The man was tall and thin. He had dark straight hair that was beginning to turn silver. He carried a heavy bag. He wore dark glasses.

By the time her harassee had fled her screaming insistence, the man slipped through the crowd and stopped in front of her.

She started on him, “Msr! We have—”

“Not you,” he brushed past her.

Her teeth ground to a halt. She involuntarily stepped back. Silas squared his shoulders and stood.

“What kinds of furs are these?” he placed his whole hand on the thickest kind. Zeilla cringed that he’d rubbed hand oil into it, but he didn’t move his hand. In fact, he rubbed it in.

Instead of answering, Silas stared at the man who’d entered his personal space, sliding his head into a rightward tilt. He blinked slowly. His face was serene, which was when Zeilla took another step back to get out of the way. Silas’s eyes flicked to her once, then back to the other man who didn’t bother to look her way at all.

“Zeilla,” Silas prompted.

“It’s ocean wallern fur, msr.”

The man didn’t remove himself from Silas’s space, so it seemed fairly certain that Silas would hurt him. The stranger didn’t look weak, but he was older, and looked half Silas’s weight.

But then he stepped back, and with his space re-established, Silas crossed his arms again.

“What would you trade for the girl?” he asked.

Her eyes flicked to Silas.

“Not for trade.”

Her silent breath out solidified her. Of course he wouldn’t.

“What about sale?”

Silas said nothing, but Zeilla hadn’t expected him to. He didn’t say many words and never re-stated them.

The stranger though seemed to take his silence as interest. She suppressed a smile, no one knew how to handle Silas like she did. From his bag the man pulled a pouch of coins. There were many. Probably their whole year’s worth of stock. Of course, true irritation now lurked between the furrows of Silas’s brow.

“Take your hetos and leave or I will hurt you,” he snarled.

“Not hetos—”

“Said no.” Silas stepped forward. Zeilla raised her chin, proud. Now Silas would make him leave.

“They’re conductors,” he finished.

She looked between the two of them. Conductors?

 _He couldn’t have that many, could he?_ she asked. In return she only received only a stone silence. _Hey, Skersha, I’m sorry about earlier._ But Skersha stayed silent.

“We need to talk, alone,” the stranger said to Silas, but also to her.

Silas crossed his arms, so Zeilla did the same. But then her master said, “Zeilla, go.”

She stood there gaping just long enough for him to turn and seize her with eyes that sent fearful lightning from behind her ears to down her back. She ducked her head, stepped it out until she was far enough away that she couldn’t hear them. The sun and the market roared. They were still close enough to guess what their motions meant.

 _Skersha, please, help me hear them._  But she was begging to a resentful god. No, not a god. Skersha could hear herself referred to like that in Zeilla’s innermost thoughts, and hearing it consciously gave her too much. Power, amusement. Just, too much.

Silas stood stock still. The stranger pointed. He hissed. He got up in Silas’s face. But yet nothing happened. Silas could be relied upon to be temperamental, at the very least. But Zeilla didn’t know. Conductors could be a currency, yes, but also a valuable substance, harvested from the gates of tarod. It was what allowed the energy of creatures like Skersha to be drawn out and contained. To be entered into Energetic systems and used to power everything from lightbulbs to the creatures they had ridden into this town on. That the stranger had a whole bag of them, well, flashing it around like that, Zeilla was surprised no one had mugged him for it.

Silas motioned for her to come back, and she side-eyed the stranger as she did. He took his hands out from himself. They went up in a mocking surrender as he backed away. She went to stand by her master’s side and stood tall.

When the stranger was a ways away Silas turned to her. “You are to go with him.”

_Alright, you’ve got my attention._

“I, what?” Zeilla almost laughed, but his eyes were serious.

“You’ll obey him as you would me.”

“What do you mean? Master, what did I do? I— what?”

In vague subconscious thoughts, Skersha began to giggle. _Oh this is exciting._

“You are to go with him, his name is Maeron.”

“Silas, you make far more with my help than you would without it, you know that,” she began to take steps back, “Even with all that money it’s just once, just one time, you’ll spend it all in a year, you need me to help you manage.”

“Don’t be petulant.” He closed the space between them again and her breath came faster than ever before. When he placed his hand on her shoulder, she flinched away.

“Silas, you can’t—”

“You go now.”

The man grabbed her arm, when had he come back? She gasped in, gasped out. On her wrists he tied a roped and she struggled and Silas wrapped his arms around her. An approximation of a hug. A gesture towards the physical contact she had always wished for, used as force.

“Silas, no!”

_HELP_

The man threw her atop his creature and jumped on. He rode the creature down the market. Its bones jutted the air from her panicked lungs. She writhed in pain and terror and ended with her head tipped near falling off the creature’s back.

“I’m going to fall,” she screamed through breathless movement.

He huffed, “Stop moving.”

But she had to get off. The compression forced her stomach near vomiting. She couldn’t get a sense of direction. She struggled. With her arms tied in front of her, her center of gravity was off. Now they were at the edge of town. It was all she could do to throw her hands in front of her face when the creature hit a final bump that sent her thudding to the ground, making contact on her elbows and landing on her back.

Pain seized her chest from the dust and she heard something crack. She jumped to her feet. Sprinted for shade where she’d be out of view. But her hands were still tied. The creature got to her first, stopped in front of her before her sandals crossed the shadow’s edge. The man jumped off before she could run around it and when his arms wrapped around her the same way that Silas’s had a seizure of pain, neck to chest, rocked through her body. Her legs kicked against open air.

“Stop struggling,” he said.

But her fury had never left, was there in full force. If she let go of it for one moment, she would be consumed with terror.

Feeling a force she hadn’t seen in his arms, he heaved her down and dumped her back to her feet. Yanking the rope around her wrists back sent pain through her shoulder again and she stumbled, fell to the dirt. He tied the rope to the same post that he tied his creature to. The man looked at her with an anger she could tell was suppressed, and she felt fear layer with pain layered with fear.

“Look,” he sighed, scrubbing his face with his hands. “Where we’re riding is fairly far, okay? And it’s sickeningly hot here, so I’d prefer if you listen to me now. I’m going to sit behind you on my creature and you’re not going to fall off. If you do I’ll —I don’t know— make you walk behind or something. Do you get that?”

Zeilla nodded.

“Good.” He pointed to the water trough and his creature went to drink it. She stared at him, did he expect her to drink from there as well and get sick? He shrugged and turned to calibrate the travel path into the creature’s side while it drank as instructed.

Creatures were self-sustaining, but he didn’t seem to know that. It was good. Now, she needed time. Needed some time to figure it all out. Just needed it all to stop.

_Skersha I know you’re mad and I know I have no right to ask you for anything but I need your help._

The wolf was silent. Zeilla sat on the ground.

_Please. You know I wouldn’t ask again if it wasn’t serious._

Deep in the part of her mind where Skersha resided, Zeilla could tell she was being heard, but unlike the wolf she had never read the other’s mind. Zeilla didn’t know how Skersha’s thoughts worked, had never violated her mind in return. The man began walked around to the other side of the creature and Zeilla’s heartbeat raced.

_Skersha, you have to help me go back, please._

But still Skersha said nothing. She grit her teeth. Strained against her bindings, ass in the dust and sand. There was really only one bargaining chip. Herself.

_Look, I’ll owe you. I’ll make a trade. You can take over. I’m true to my word with you, just like you are with me. All you have to do is help me go back to Silas._

_No,_  Skersha said finally, and Zeilla’s felt the frustration seething within her, _you have no idea what I would do to take over again, but I won’t help you return to him._

_Skersha!_

_We’ve been with Silas for too long. I want to see where this one will take us and I refuse to allow you to throw that away._

_Why are you doing this to me? You don’t know what he’ll be like. He’ll be so much worse, I just know it._  Zeilla’s muscles began to tremble. Her breath turned ragged. _Skersha, you can’t do this, he’ll hurt me and you won’t even do anything about it. Please._

The man walked back to this side of his creature. He entered the last final strokes of course calibration and the creature ceased drinking. Its rope came easily from the post.

 _Zeilla,_  Skersha said, _I promise that if he hurts you, I will stop him._

Of course Zeilla didn’t believe her. Of course Skersha could tell.

L _isten to me, I’m not some– some evil person. I’m serious. Look, I know you don’t believe me, but look_ – _I didn’t really burn your carvings. I’ll give them back to you._

Something like shock must’ve registered on Zeilla’s face because the man narrowed his eyes at her while he untied her from the post as well, though he left her wrist ties in place. It felt like Skersha had emptied the air from her chest all over again, broken some bone in her shoulder all over again. She had to be lying because Zeilla _saw_ the box go up in flames. She hated this insincerity of her own eyes.

_You really promise?_

Skersha sent her feelings of reassurance like a blanket washing over her and melting away her body’s fervent shaking. Skersha so rarely did that. But she never protected Zeilla either.

_I promise. I’ll protect you, I’ll give you your carvings. If you promise to let me take over once we know what’s going on wherever he takes us._

The reminder of Skersha’s terms almost made her stop. But no. She’d agreed to the same terms before for so much less.

_I promise too._

_It’s a deal._

“Get on,” the man said.

Zeilla scrambled to her feet, careful not to put pressure on her left shoulder where she was certain now something was broken. He watched her with dark brown eyes, not in the way that Silas’s eyes tracked her. Not like a hunter, but as a man studying.


	8. Kazla

“Why didn’t I remember you before?” Kazla demanded. He had barged back into her room. Her head was ducked down as she took notes on a series of bleats in front of her. Her expression spread furrowed brows.

“When didn’t you remember me?”

“Until just now. I went for a swim. I¾”

He stopped. She didn’t really look guilty or malicious. She really just looked confused.

“What did you,” his voice cracked, “did you do this?”

She stood slowly, approached him gently, as if for every moment he had to agree for her to proceed. “Kazla,” she said, “I didn’t. I didn’t do anything.”

“I didn’t remember you.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

Kazla looked from the tense set of Veinneiez’s eyebrows back to her notebook, abandoned on the table.

Dishes still on table, stack of notebooks, pile of bleats.

Shoes off, bangles off, ink on fingers.

Clearly, she’d been in the middle of something. Clearly, he’d interrupted her. He should feel bad for that, he thought. He was being a burden.

“Do you forget a lot these days?”

“No.”

He thought it would come out sounding certain, but it left his mouth fast like the bite of a cornered animal. With no words she pulled him seated by the hand. Here, to the table he’d had morning chow. Instead of yelling at him or biting back, she passed him a second notebook filled with her blocked and jagged handwriting.

“Here,” she said.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“I’m going through all my past bleats. Taking notes on the ones I sent back.”

Kazla looked at the page but didn’t quite understand. The new unfolding of his old memory confused the words on the page in front of him. “Why are you doing that?”

“So I can understand my mistakes. Where I went wrong. Where I misinterpreted my mission instructions and was undereffective.”

“Why are you giving it to me?”

She shrugged lopsidedly, “Peace offering? Maybe you could help me out. You’ve done this kind of thing, right?”

“Not really.” His teeth ground themselves in. “My evaluations were in person.”

She laughed. “Ahh, well. I’m not nearly as important to the Emphit. Or the Emphitet.”

Clearly he wasn’t that important to the Emphitet either.

She sat herself down as well, putting her feet up on the table and leaning back in her chair, and just like that Kazla had been sidetracked into the present. It’d happened so fast he was no longer certain he could ask her about the memories, or her involvement in them. It felt like he’d used up all that time.

How would she know what was wrong with his brain? Why did he assume she had done something to him in the first place? Memory removal was a long tarod-fueled process involving approval of the council and a Creature spirit willing to do so. It had to be unanimous and consensual to remove even one memory from a person. So now, what, everything was a conspiracy? Was he to trust no one? Wasn’t that kind of thinking why he left the rocks?

Kazla looked down, the book was padded with pages and pages of action. He turned back to the first page.

  * Report to Emphitet on First Message Received, write in payment preferences, sign registration documents. 
    * First Message Received ceremony: completed. **Payment preference: Monetary.** Registration documents filled
  * Gift 50 hetos to Mokatone, Artisan – 3rd ring from rock, East Village 
    * Mokatone gifted 50 hetos – **50he reimburse**
  * Transport parcel from Overlook to Elders council. Safety Advisory: cliff ascent. Special Instructions: Show bleat to Master Gardener to receive her package. 
    * Parcel delivered to council



“These are all just basic tasks,” he said.

Veinneiez glanced up from the bleat she was reading. “That’s how it works. That’s my very first mission notebook.” She motioned to a stack of similar notebooks to her left, and the one currently in her lap. “They start you off small to see how reliable you are. There’s constant training and schooling. It took me years before I’d earned the confidence to be recommended as a personal errander to the Emphitet.”

“Huh.”

He leafed through a few pages, skimming them for something longer than a few sentences each. He’d never seen an errander book, but he knew there had to be more than this. More than payments given and packeges delivered. Another entry a few pages down snagged his eye.

  * **Locate Child: URGENT.** Discription: Male, prepubescent, approximately waist height, hair in locs. Last seen by 2nd ring North Village parent group playing at cliff base wearing red shirt, cargo shorts, bow in hair, no shoes. 
    * Child found in cliff dwelling. Claims climbed cliff face to main stairs and got lost. Returned to members of parent group.



“Y’all rescuing children now?”

“Not exactly. Urgent messages are sent out to every errander in the affected area. If you look, I don’t respond back to most of the urgents. With this kid, I just happened to see him. It actually got me a bit of special attention.”

Kazla brushed through some more pages, but it was all much the same.

“If you want me to help, then give me a more recent notebook,” he said, putting this one back on the table.

She angled a raised eyebrow towards him. “You’re the one who barged in here unannounced.”

“Right, because you’ve never obtruded on me.”

Somehow, it felt less like an accusation and more like a joke. He could see her trying not to smile. He almost felt the same.

“Okay,” she said. She kicked her feet down and thumbed through the books, picking the second from top of the stack. It was actually a nice book, red-dyed and leather bound.

She handed it to him.

“Knock yourself out.”

 Even from the first few pages he could tell the missions in this one were more complex. Mission objectives and reports could be paragraphs or even pages long.

Some of them just wrote:

  * Report given in person



Kazla skipped until halfway through the book, going until he found a few more missions that stuck out to him.

“So you’ve been to the far north,” he said.

“I’ve been all over,” she murmered.

“For a couple of months, though.”

She hmmed her assent. He skimmed more than read.

He closed the book.

“I need your help,” he said.

“Yeah,” she closed her book as well and put it to the side. Folded her hands. Made eye contact. “Alright, I’m listening.”

“I had a dream about my sister.”

“Have you spoken with Mnel’zia lately?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Veinneiez opened her mouth, then closed it again. Then, “Do you want to talk about the dream?”

“Not really. I just wanted you to know that. I don’t know.”

“Yeah, look that’s okay. Look, you don’t have to… explain yourself all the time.”

He breathed through his belly, glancing at the stack of books on the table.

“So you really forgot me, huh?

“Maybe this isn’t the first time I’ve forgotten things.”

“Maybe not.”

He stood. “Good luck on your work.”

“Wait,” Veinneiez said, clearly surprised by the abruptness of his leaving, “Take the book with you. It’s uh, I mean it’s my recent missions, up to half a year ago. I want to be transparent with you, Kazla. You can trust me.”

Kazla nodded. The journal, her long dark fingers.

“Yeah, okay, I can flip through it some more,” he said, taking it from her outstretched hand.

“Have you ever tried keeping a journal yourself? Not for work, for you. Maybe writing down when you remember things. Or dreams, if you don’t wanna talk about them.”

She looked up at him with clear eyes. She was just trying to help, he told himself. He needed to stop being so bitter all the time.

“Yeah,” Kazla said, “yeah, I’ve tried that.”


	9. Chapter 9

Have you heard of the greedy father wanting the biggest woven basket? A child’s face is a mirror. Have you heard the words enough to think them? Can you not say your own name? In-between mountains a spine lays out the canyon path. Do you know the meaning of your sister’s name? Can you say hers? You have it, now keep it. We are here to advise. You bend backwards, you are fold. We never hear you tap out.

Shame on your father for not teaching you right. Shame on him for hiding you away. Shame on you for you are your father. Who taught you to do your hair? Who taught you to sit with your legs straight out front? No one taught you to grow, the way you do, family-fertilized, self-weeded. We are so proud.

A panther’s claw gave us our dip of the back. Those muscles are for labour. Those muscles are for picking up your kids and carrying them while you work. Those muscles are a debt. You have it now, keep it. You twist yourself up. You bend backwards to please your family. Your family is yourself. Be less selfish. Care for yourself.

Your back is two beds, and in each vertebra, a seed. They will plant your rows to the dust and every time you must grow back up. Dig your palms into foreign soil, the only soil your palms know. Grow up. Stand back up. You’re doing this to yourself.

Stop trying to be perfect. That is why you’re stressed. Do better. Your father’s friend’s daughter has done it. We are so proud of your achievements. You’re a halfbreed maggot. We think you have come so far. We’re never far away. We are less than five miles away and will never tell you we’ve been living here the whole time. We are you, even though you have yet to meet us.

It takes a village to raise a child. It takes children to turn on each other. It takes one bad apple to spoil the barrel. Lead is a known neurotoxin. Lead poisoning has been statistically linked to increases in crime, lack of aggression control, and poor decision making. The best of seeds won’t grow in salted fields.

Your siblings need you, care for them. That is the way of things. You’re doing this for us, do this for you. Could have been married at twelve. You have your father’s spine. You don’t know the stories so you will never know us. It’s called mother-tongue for a reason.


	10. Zeilla

They travelled towards the direction the sun came from in mornings and the man took Zeilla past three towns before they stopped. He tied her wrists again, ordered his creature to drink again. He refilled both his food and water stores. After that, they rode on again.

Zeilla tried her best to remember the way, but the longer they rode on the harder the attempt became. It wasn’t until they’d passed several villages more that she realized how much her schedule had been upset. She was used to sleeping in the days and then waking as the sun set to make Silas’s meals and be off. She was used to selling in the mornings ‘til the sun was directly overhead, and then going right back to sleep.

In this state, she could barely keep aware enough to do as she did, to trace the landmarks as she passed them and to tell herself stories to remember them all. One of the stories was about a rock formation that howled brash wind at them passing as if screaming at her to keep aware of the animals beneath her, the ones Skersha had pointed out on their trip before. Zeilla felt herself slipping into sleep.

 _Skersha?_ she asked, as if the spirit would offer her any sort of reassurance.

_Stay awake, don’t stay awake, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to worry. I know the way._

Of course Skersha would want that. Zeilla, not knowing the way back home. Zeilla, out of control. One more piece of leverage from which the spirit could cleave Zeilla’s body from her possession. Her resolve hardened and she pinched the skin on her arms, over and over again to keep awake.

She continued to fervently weave and memorize her storymap until they stopped again. Zeilla had no idea if this was their final destination or how long they would go. All she knew was this probably wasn’t it. The entire town was visible from the back of the creature she rode.

“I could call you Seeli,” the Msr. said, pulling on the creature to slow..

Zeilla’s hands clenched into the creature to keep themselves from shaking. The sun was back up. She had now been awake for over a full day.

“That’s not my name,” she said.

“It means small one in my original language.” He repeated, “I could call you Seeli.”

Coming from this man: arms wrapped around her, tall at her back, that felt like a threat. She clenched her teeth. Silas had once smacked a tooth from her mouth, frustrated in training her, but he’d never tried to change her name.

He demounted the creature and her small body almost dragged itself with him. She turned and slid off as well.

“Drink,” he threw her a water bag.

She caught it between bound hands. She’d been thirsty, used to dehydration though she was. It was important, it seemed, not to feel gratitude even though he’d left her alone as well. He hadn’t tied her wrists to anything to prevent her escape, but at this point there was nowhere to run or to hide. Their stop was nothing but a modest creature post amidst sand dunes with the sun beating down from above. But Silas always told her to appreciate what she got.

“My name is Maeron,” he said, turning away.

With some effort, she screwed the lid back on the bag. With his back turned for the first time since he’d stolen her away, she was able to look at him. He didn’t look that young, or that old. Every now and then he would look to her, maybe to make sure she didn’t run, maybe to get a sense of her like she was him. And though he would not speak through his eyes or even a twitch on his face, she saw that he had some strong emotion carried within, as if his chest and his head weren’t enough to contain it and it would simply begin pouring from his neck in streaming perspiration.

Zeilla dipped her head out of respect at the least, “Msr. Maeron.”

“Just Maeron,” he said.

He ordered his creature to water and she looked away. To her hands. To the sky. What had happened? How had Silas given her away like this? Was it that she had done something wrong, or was a sack full of conductors really just his price?

“Are you a child or an adult?” Msr. Maeron asked.

She looked back, and his eyes were still studying her as if their pupils could somehow take the shapes and forms that Skersha’s did when they peeled away her thoughts. He couldn’t, of course he couldn’t. No one was in her mind but Skersha and herself. But her throat had turned dry.

“I am still young,” she said in monotone.

The Msr. cocked his head like a question mark, “Do you not know your age?”

“No.”

Maybe she could give a guess.

“Not how many rainy seasons you’ve lived through?”

“No.”

Maybe she was trying the Msr.’s patience intentionally.

“Come on, your master must have given you some idea.”

She shrugged, displaying a disregard for the question that would have completely driven Silas. But she needed information, needed to collect and hoard data like she needed to breathe another day.

Data point: what sorts of disrespect made Msr. Maeron angry?

Data point: what did he look like angry?

Data point: did he strike harder with his left hand or his right?

Was there any way she could placate him? What were his insecurities?

For Silas, she’d had all that figured out for years. Heavy drinking, losing money, bad hunts, and her fuck ups: all non-negotiables for his violence. But she could negotiate a lot more than that. She’d gotten good at it.

Though clearly, not good enough. Somehow, she had failed to amass enough points of pattern. She never thought he would give her away, never thought he would be so un-sentimental, not towards her.

Zeilla had been the indestructible child Silas could raise and work and beat as he pleased. Who would always look to him for instruction. Who would always heal within mere days. When Silas had discovered her ability to stitch her own bones back together, he’d only gotten worse at controlling his anger.

Two children before her, she thought, had died. She wasn’t sure exactly, only knew what Silas told her. In her mind they had become her siblings, and she imagined them as an older boy and a girl her own age. They would’ve had grey eyes like her. They would’ve been Silas’s slaves like her, and he would’ve only killed them in his confused attempt to raise them as his master had raised him. Two sticks and no reward.

 _Come back,_  Skersha growled at her, _he’s looking at you and you stopped responding. He’ll get angry._

 _Good,_  Zeilla said. She normally did anything to prevent an attack, but now she needed to know.

The healing had been Skersha, all of it. If Zeilla died, Skersha would too. That had always been Skersha’s motivation. Self-preservation, if nothing more.

But Zeilla didn’t really want this Msr. touching her. Not where pain was still streaming from her shoulder like sharp ribbons and not where his arms would wrap around hers to hold onto the creature as well.

 _Fix my shoulder,_  Zeilla demanded. _You made me go with him. This is you._

The fury in Skersha became fire on Zeilla’s coal. _Take control or I will, and don’t you dare make demands of me._

The spirit thrust her forward, shoulder still wincing, almost worse now.

“What’s wrong?” the Msr. was asking.

Zeilla shrugged again, one shoulder this time. His eyes squinted as if that would make them understand. But he couldn’t.

“Well get back on, then.”

The emotions Zeilla felt dripping from Maeron’s neck had muted. Maybe that was what his angry felt like.

With his help, she climbed onto the creature’s back, her hands tied still, throat still dry. He climbed up behind her.


	11. Kazla

The next time Kazla saw Veinneiez was at the toolshop, days after she gave him her mission notes.  He’d just eaten midday chow, stuffed with the taste still lingering on his tongue. It was one of the good days, and all he could see or smell in the air and sky was pleasantness, even as he walked towards the rust scent the toolshop gave off that could send him away, panicking, on a day that wasn’t quite as good.

He found her sitting by the door, writing in one of her notebooks, though there was no mission bleat aside her, so it wasn’t clear what she was writing. She glanced up and met his eyes. By this time, he figured, she was going to show up eventually. Here was as good a place as any on as good a day as any. He didn’t turn away.

“How did you find me?” he asked lamely, stopping a few feet from her crossed legs.

“I heard you broke a spark-runner. You had to show up eventually.”

He squinted, “That was two whole days ago.”

Her shoulders lifted, “Eventually.”

“How long have you been waiting here for me to happen to show up? No, how did you even hear that?”

“Not much happens in small towns, Kazla.”

He scrubbed his face with his hands, “Mmm, stalker, okay. I’m going inside. Feel free to keep following me.”

“Of course,” she said, standing.

The metallic smell was stronger inside. It was bearable today, but still, it was stronger.

“Hey, Grit,” he said to the shopowner. Kazla had never learned his birth name.

Empty save for shopkeep. Exit behind Veinneiez.

Grit. Tools in hand, humming. Not a threat.

Possible weapons: everything.

“Magic man,” the guy said back.

Kazla grunted. It was getting time to move again.

Everything inside was hand-made by Grit, and he had quite the impressive range. Making the kinds of parts and fixers Kazla required to work on Energy was a specialty skill, not every village had someone trained. Usually Kazla would have to lug around a small stock, but not here. It was nice to be free of that kind of weight, even if he couldn’t always pop over to the shop the same day things needed replacing.

“Just this?” Grit asked when Kazla handed over the runner he needed.

“Just that.”

Grit was a big friendly guy. He’d seen him around, talking almost nonstop. But he’d never engaged with Kazla. He appreciated that about the guy. He was paid and out of the toolshop without another word, Veinneiez walking quickly behind him.

“Howcome it did take you two days to stop by, anyway? It’s not like you were busy,” she said, caught up.

“Is that really what you want to talk about?” Kazla asked.

He held up the runner, bouncing sunlight off its glass encased crystals. He could tell from the glint that it was well crafted, would last a couple years. Good man, Grit.

“I don’t have a set purpose with being by you,” she said, “this isn’t an interrogation.”

Behind you.

He put the runner in his pouch, twisting his head to see where she’d fallen back, out of his periphery. Into his blind spot. He felt a tingling of irritation reach from his back to his neck. Sometimes it was just like that, like a monster waiting to surge up and possess him.

“If it’s not an interrogation then what is it?”

“I just wanna know about your life,” she said shrugging, “is that so wrong?”

He turned on her. “Yes! You’re an errander, Veinneiez. Why are you here?”

 “I told you, I—”

“You didn’t tell me shit.”

She looked careful with her words, “I don’t think it would help if I told you specifically what I’m trying to do before I try to do it.”

“You make it sound like you’re plotting against me.”

“I’m not, Kazla. I promise. Can you— I know you have no reason to, but can you just trust me?” Her ironwood eyes shone more amber under sunlight.

“No.”

He started walking, fast like before. This spark runner was good, he could ask the woman to pay him chow instead of hetos, he could wrap that up and travel with ready food instead of coins he could be robbed of. 

“Kazla—”

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

“What? Why?”

“If you want to tell me why you’re here, you can come with me. Otherwise, I don’t care where you go but you can’t follow me. I know how you erranders are, and I am warning you now. I have no qualms about beating you to a bloody pulp if you try to kidnap me.”

“I would never hurt you,” she said.

“I’ve had erranders drug me, electrocute me, manipulate me. I don’t care if we were friends once, when we were kids. I don’t trust you.”

Her mouth opened, closed. He could feel his shoulders rising to his ears in defense.

“Okay. Wait,” she said. “When are you leaving?”

He sucked in a breath, weighing his options on the balance of his body. Fine.

“First thing. My stuff is packed. Just gotta… finish this repair I guess.”

“Alright, I’ll be there.”

The muscles in his jaw must have spoken, because she squinted.

“Don’t you bare your teeth at me, I heard you. Give me until tomorrow. I’ll explain myself when I see you. Now, I’ve got to pack my own things.”

And just like that, Kazla could feel himself softening. Perhaps it was the Emphitet. She and her people didn’t usually bother with apologies or explanations. It took him off guard.

 “You’d better not be bringing a whole cart of stuff. I saw how many books you have,” he huffed. And now, he thought she could tell the annoyance was for show, because her eyes had changed too, from upset to laughing. Like before. He liked that look.

“Worry about yourself.”

She left. Would he really see her the next morning? He couldn’t be sure. He’d never told her where he was slept, and he wasn’t waiting for her past sunrise.

That night was good for dreams. He had some, but they were strange combinations of plot and colour, no drowning, no rust. It could’ve been the excitement of moving again, or maybe the satisfaction of a complicated fix that day. Either way, when he woke up, he felt like he’d gotten more rest than he usually got in a week. A good sign.

Everything really was packed; he didn’t have much. Two water pouches and a backpack, as well as a bag that went around his waist under his shirt, just in case. When he vacated his encampment, a nook in a rock hidden by view by brush just outside the city, he made sure to scatter the worn-out leaves of his bedding around in as unintentional of a way he could manage. He trekked to the river and filled up his water from the stream. Little fish were swimming up it. A good idea to follow the river, then, for the food. As long as it went away from the direction of the rocks.

 “There you are!” Veinneiez called away from the riverbank, breaking through his meditations. She had on a backpack, with more openings and little pockets than he could count. She had a knife too, hanging from her right hip. Long enough to enter the heart but not quite long enough for bushwhacking. “I couldn’t find you under that weird rock.”

Kazla recoiled from the thought of her finding him there sleeping. “What? How did you know I was there? And why do you have a knife?”

She walked up to him and down the bank, lightfooted, yet managing to snap all the branches in her path.

“Oh, I usually do. I took it off the other days, for you. And you told me to find you, remember?”

He grimaced, “I really thought you’d just look at the stays.”

“Well obviously first, but you weren’t there.”

“I’ll just never challenge you to anything.”

“Yeah,” she sat. “But you wanted to talk before we left.”

“Sure.”

“Then sit.” She patted the bank next to her, putting her backpack to the left.

He sat, thinking of the next time he would wash these clothes.

“So, my mission is to help you.”

“What does that mean?”

“Look, there’s a reason it’s me. You know, childhood friend? Known you longer than anyone who’s not currently dead?”

“Funny.”

She looked out to where the red skyline made itself vividly known. When his eyes followed hers, he thought he saw animals in the distance. He couldn’t be sure which ones. Perhaps her sight was better than his.

“So, the Emphitet wanted to know that if you couldn’t be convinced to go back and get some help, at the very least you’d have someone here to help you. And I didn’t want to tell you that. Well, you know your relationship with your mother. I didn’t want you to think this was all some kind of ploy. Because I do care about you, Kazla. And so does she. In her own way. Maybe it was to sooth her guilt. But hey, do intentions really matter if the end result is good? That’s why I’m here.”

Kazla blinked slowly.

“Consequences over intention, right?” she said.

            He looked down to the riverbank at his feet. Taking up a stick, he scratched lines into the ground centimeters from the flow.

            “No, yeah, sure,” he said, after the first few lines. He pulled the stick back digging a groove and watched it fill with water up. “But, you’re supposed to, what? Tell me how I’m fucking up my life? That’s the vacation for you?”

“Well, no, I’m here to help you work through it all. Her. You. Feeling like you don’t deserve to be her son—”

“Woah, that’s not—”

“Right, right, that’s not my place to say.”

“That’s not why.”

“Okay.”

This was a move, on Elontria’s part. He knew that. But he wasn’t sure how. Everything with Veinneiez and his memory were all messed up. Jumbled and confused. Maybe it would be easier to figure out the Emphitet’s game if he knew what was going on in his own head. Vei at least seemed sincere.

“You can help fix me?” he asked.

The sun was rising now, red gloaming fourth and staining the horizon. The breeze embraced him, reassuring him of its permanence. At the dawn, the line between night and day so blurred now that it reminded him: time had never existed except in the mind of the people.

 He couldn’t even imagine this moment being allowed to last in a stay at the rocks, no matter how much coloured lighting or decorative fluff was put up to cloud his mind.

“I can’t fix you, just like that. But I could help you. Get better. I have some training in cases like yours, with this sort of thing.”

“This sort of thing. What exactly is this sort of thing?”

“I can’t exactly tell you yet. I need you to talk to me first. I won’t know what to do until you tell me what’s going on in your head.”

“Okay. So I tell you what’s wrong and you fix me. What do you need to know?”

She sighed, “It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a process. It takes time. I’d need you to completely open up to me and really engage honestly, otherwise I won’t be able to help you. ”

“But it’ll work?”

“It’s worth a try.”

His eyes narrowed.

“So you don’t know for sure that it’ll work, but you want me to tell you every single horrible thing I’m thinking.”

“It will definitely help, I just don’t know if it’ll make all of your issues go away.”

“Then no thanks.” He looked once more towards the river. “If it’s just help, I can help myself. If you can’t fix me, don’t bother.”

“Kazla you have to,” Veinneiez said. Her voice was more demanding than he’d heard it. Pushing. She stood. “You can’t just do this by yourself!”

Look at her.

His eyebrows furrowed up at her, “I don’t have to talk to you.”

“Yes,” she leaned down, jabbing her finger towards his chest, “you do.”

You could break her finger.

“This is in _my_ head. Fix me?” He stood. “You? You can’t make that kind of promise. You don’t know what it means. You don’t know what that means to me. You might’ve known me when I was young but now, you don’t know a thing about me.”

She stood up too, wrists jangling with metal rings. “Yes I do.”

Teeth grinding, breath hard, “You don’t understand.”

She stepped into his space. Said, “Tell me.”

Go left, neutralize the knife, elbow to the throat, rush, then pin.

“No!” he said, it came out like a roar.

Veinneiez slapped him.

His shock reverberated from jaw to browbone. He almost couldn’t comprehend that she’d actually done it, simultaneously as he knew that of course she would.

“Coward,” she hissed. A whisper to herself but given with the full force of her stare.

“What?” he said, still blinking. “What did you just call me?”

“You heard me.”

“No. Say it again. Fucking say it again.”

Her chin upturned. The top of her head only reaching the height of his nose.

“I called you a coward. You’re weak. You’re scared, running away from problems like a baby.”

“Do you know anything? Do you not know what I’ve done? Who I was made into?”

He stood there and found himself, crowned in sunlight, taken over by black rage.

“I am the Weapon of the Emphit. I earned my first kill honour before I was fifteen. I’ve fought Spirits with my bare hands. I’ve forgotten more about Energy work than you’ll _ever_ know. I could kill you right now.”

“But you won’t,” she crossed her arms, “because you care more about protecting people than defending yourself.”

“And that’s supposed to be a bad thing? What is wrong with you?”

She stepped back and suddenly there was no noise. Nothing but the river rush and the warmth of the rising sun. Kazla finally heard how loudly he was breathing, and how quiet Veinneiez was. Felt how his hands were shaking and hers were still. She’d uncrossed her arms, and it no longer felt like her against him. It was him against him. It always had been.

Vei sighed, as if it made her sad to see him like this. “Your empathy is what’s hurting you, Kazla. I do know you. I see you. Someone as sensitive as you is not meant to be alone.”

“Fine,” he said. Confused, angry, cheek stinging, self-hating. He felt that thing inside him lay down and give up. “Fine, then. Help me.”

“Say please.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to comment!


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